Movie Review: Robot and Frank

One of the things I really like about Science Fiction is that the genre can be used to tell just about any kind of story - I know, from a very basic point of view, Science Fiction should be set in the future, have advanced technology, and quite possibly aliens, but honestly, any intriguing technology can be used to to tell almost any type of story within a Science Fiction framework (like one of my favourite romances of 2009, TIMER).  Case in point, Robot and Frank.

The movie follows a man named Frank (wonderfully played by Frank Langella), who lives alone and suffers from both depression and dementia.  His two adult children, Hunter and Madison, are concerned for his well being, and eventually his son purchases him a helper robot, designed to help Frank with his routine and his overall health.

The robot does end up helping Frank, but not necessarily in the way his children would appreciate.  Overall the film was about a lonely older man finding friendship and I've got to admire that.

In addition it also had Susan Sarandon as a librarian, which is nice, as I never get tired of librarians in film (in TV however, is a slightly different story)

Movie Review: Agora

As someone who is working towards my Masters of Library Sciences Degree, there are very few movies that I feel are targeted towards my career path specifically. The Librarian made-for-tv movies starring Noah Wylie, Jet Li's Black Mask, Party Girl and The Name of the Rose come to mind, but that's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

Agora, which came out last year, finally made it to one of the speciality theatres in my city two weeks ago and I saw it yesterday. Coming from the point of view of someone who loves libraries, and has over the past few years become interested in the study of Ancient Greece and Rome, this movie was right up my ally.

The film takes place in Alexandria, Egypt in 391 AD, and follows two students of a Greek philosopher/scholar named Hypatia (played by Rachel Weisz, who by the way played another librarian in the first two Mummy films), who has an incredible understanding of mathematics and science, and unfortunately lived in a very dangerous time to be a scientist and a women.

The film does a really good job of showing a world in transition - it takes place relatively soon after Christians have stopped being persecuted by the Roman Empire and the tables are about to be turned on the followers of Rome's various pagan religions. Hypatia teaches at the Library of Alexandria and through the eyes of two of her students (one a young Roman, the other a slave), we get a very close look at this brutal period of time.

I'll definitely be purchasing the film, as I enjoyed it, found it beautifully filmed, and even though it showed some very nasty sides to a lot of the religious groups of the era, it does give a glimpse into the reasons of why this situation came about.